This powerful Buddhist protector deity is a manifestation of divine wrath employed to remove internal and external obstacles—including political adversaries. Art historian Karl Debreczeny connects this statue that names Qubilai Khan and his Tibetan imperial preceptor to the tradition of tantric war magic used by Tibetan ritual masters to help the Mongols conquer China. Such images become potent symbols of Qubilai Khan’s rule and Mongol imperial power.
Different Asian religious traditions posit different types of divine beings. Hindus generally believe in an all-encompassing God-like being, called Brahman. They also believe in a variety of other gods (deva), including Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Early Buddhists denied the existence of a single, all-powerful creator god. Nevertheless, they always recognized a variety of powerful spirits, like gandharvas and nagas. Mahayana Buddhists came to see bodhisattvas as beings of enormous power, and buddhas themselves as cosmic beings with the ability to create entire universes. Buddhist and Bon traditions in Tibet worshiped a variety of other gods (Tib. lha), like the mountain gods, or gods of the land. According to Buddhist tradition, enlightened deities are seen as beyond the cycle of death and rebirth, whereas gods (including Hindu gods) are not.
The Tanguts were an ethnic group in medieval East-Central Asia, who called themselves Minyak and spoke a language distantly related to Tibetan. Between 1038 and 1227 CE the Tanguts ruled a state in what is now the Chinese provinces of Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai. This state took the Chinese dynastic name of Xia, also called Xixia “Western Xia.” The Tangut-Xixia emperors were major patrons of Buddhism, inviting both Chinese and Tibetan monks to teach in the capital, and instituting major Buddhist translation and printing projects in three languages. The Tangut state was destroyed by the armies of Chinggis Khan, leading to their absorption into the Mongol Empire, where many Tanguts served as officials.
The Tibetan script is used to write the Tibetan language, as well as several other smaller Himalayan languages. Based on the Brahmi script used in the Gupta Empire in India, the Tibetan script was developed under the Tibetan Empire in the seventh century and is credited to minister Tonmi Sambhota (b. 619?). Two important forms of the Tibetan script are “Uchen” (Tib. “having a head”), a standard type used in printed texts, and “Umey” (Tib. “headless”), a cursive form sometimes used in manuscripts. There are many other cursive and decorative forms of the script.
Historically, Tibetan Buddhism refers to those Buddhist traditions that use Tibetan as a ritual language. It is practiced in Tibet, Mongolia, Bhutan, Ladakh, and among certain groups in Nepal, China, and Russia and has an international following. Buddhism was introduced to Tibet in two waves, first when rulers of the Tibetan Empire (seventh to ninth centuries CE), embraced the Buddhist faith as their state religion, and during the second diffusion (late tenth through thirteenth centuries), when monks and translators brought in Buddhist culture from India, Nepal, and Central Asia. As a result, the entire Buddhist canon was translated into Tibetan, and monasteries grew to become centers of intellectual, cultural, and political power. From the end of the twelfth century, Tibetans were exporting their own Buddhist traditions abroad. Tibetan Buddhism integrates Mahayana teachings with the esoteric practices of Vajrayana, and includes those developed in Tibet, such as Dzogchen, as well as indigenous Tibetan religious practices focused on local gods. Historically major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism are Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, and Geluk.
In Hinduism, Buddhism, and Bon, some gods and deities are shown with flaming hair, bulging eyes, mouths showing fangs, adorned with garlands of severed heads, and trampling enemies, real or metaphorical. In Tantric Buddhism, such deities are said to be wrathful manifestations of wisdom and method who assume fierce appearance to protect, remove or overcome mental afflictions blocking the path to enlightenment. Others are unenlightened, indigenous gods bound by oath to protect Buddhist traditions. Some female deities, or dakinis, like Vajrayogini, appear as semi-wrathful, in beatific form but bearing small fangs. In the Bon tradition, similarly to Tibetan Buddhism, wrathful deities can be emanations or represent local gods and sprits. In Hindu traditions, gods and goddesses can appear fierce, holding many weapons meant to overcome demons.
The Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) is the branch of the Mongol Empire in Asia. In 1260 when Qubilai Khan declared himself Great Khan, his realm included Mongolian, Chinese, Tangut, and Tibetan regions. In 1271 emperor Qubilai Khan proclaimed the Yuan dynasty on a Chinese model, employing Tibetan and Tangut monks. Tibetan Buddhism played an important role in the state, establishing a political model that would be emulated by later dynasties, including the Chinese Ming and Manchu Qing dynasties. The Mongols were major patrons of Tibetan institutions, and many Mongols converted to Tibetan Buddhism, though their interest declined with the fall of the empire.
A powerful Buddhist protector , is a manifestation of divine wrath employed to remove internal and external obstacles. This deity is considered especially effective in military applications. Beginning in the thirteenth century, the Mongol state employed as a means to power, both symbolically, as a path to legitimation via sacral kingship, and literally, as a ritual technology to physical power through the use of magic, which was most clearly demonstrated in Mahakala rites. The Mongol court singled out the wrathful figure of Mahakala in his form as Panjaranatha (“Lord of the [Bone] Pavilion”) as state protector and focus of the imperial cult. This form of Mahakala came to symbolize Qubilai Khan (1215–1294), the famous Mongol emperor and founder of the (1271–1368), as the wrathful destructive power of the universal sacral ruler . The Nepalese master artist and head of the Yuan imperial atelier Anige (1245–1306) made a sculpture of Panjaranatha Mahakala for Qubilai Khan’s final conquest of China, and it became a potent symbol of both Qubilai’s rule and the Yuan imperial lineage. The association was so strong that even four centuries later, when the , who conquered China in the seventeenth century, were positioning themselves as Qubilai’s rightful inheritors, they installed what they claimed was the same statue of Mahakala in the Manchu imperial shrine at Mukden in 1635.
The Stone Sculpture Dated 1292
Although Qubilai Khan’s Mahakala sculpture disappeared after the fall of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the limestone version in the Musée Guimet, dated 1292, is a product of the same context and reveals much about the tradition. Mahakala’s power is conveyed through the deity’s fierce appearance—bulging eyes, bared fangs, hair standing on end, a crown of skulls and bone ornaments—and his pose, squatting on a human corpse. Images of wrathful deities are commonly carved in black stone (fig. 2), a color closely associated with wrathful activity. Here, the stone figure of Mahakala was painted black, in keeping with the deity’s (fig. 3).
Fig. 2
Panjaranatha Mahakala; Tibet; 15th century; stone with pigments;10 1/8 × 7 1/8 × 4 1/8 in. (25.7 × 18.1 × 10.5 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; C2002.10.2 (HAR 65085)
Fig. 3
Panjarnatha Mahakala; Tibet; 18th century; pigments on cloth; 23¾ × 18 3/8 in. (60.3 × 46.7 cm); Rubin Museum of Art; gift of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation; F1998.15.1 (HAR 649)
An inscription on the back of the sculpture (fig. 4) names Qubilai Khan and his Tibetan Imperial Preceptor, Pakpa Lodro Gyeltsen (1235–1280), placing it at the very center of Mongol imperial interests:
As for this sculpture, in order to spread the precious teachings of the far and wide and endure for a long time; to pacify obstacles to the lives of all the great patrons and priests; and to destroy all enemies, the one called Atsara Pakshi, close attendant and cared for by the kindness of the called Pakpa, eminent guru and second Buddha of [this] degenerate age, and protected by that widely renowned great khan called Qubilai, king who rules nearly all of the world, acted as patron. The master artist unrivaled in this field of knowledge (craft), called Konchok Kyab, having served, successfully accomplished it in the Water Male Dragon Year (1292). May you enjoy great prosperity!
There has been some speculation as to the identity of the patron of this famous statue. Atsara Pakshi, mentioned in the inscription, is not a name but rather an epithet meaning the learned master or sorcerer. One intriguing attribution that elucidates Tibetan political role in the Mongol court is Qubilai Khan’s primary Mahakala ritual specialist at court, Ga Anyen Dampa Kunga Drak (ca. 1230–1303) (fig. 5), a close disciple of Imperial Preceptor Pakpa and often described as pakshi in both Yuan Chinese and Tibetan sources. Dampa, recognized as an emanation of Mahakala walking on earth, was credited with intervening in several key battles in Mongol military campaigns, including the momentous final fall of the Chinese Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), and erected several imperially sponsored temples and images of Mahakala.
Fig. 5.
Statue of Ga Anyen Dampa (ca. 1230–1303); Degonpo Protector Chapel (founded 1284); 1980s re-creation; clay; Kardze, Kham region, eastern Tibet (Ganzi, Sichuan Province, China); photograph by Karl Debreczeny, 2001
Dampa served the Yuan imperial court and Qubilai Khan directly. The Persian historian Rashid al-Din, who wrote his famous history about 1300, specifically mentions Dampa as someone of great authority and importance in the great khan’s eyes. The calligraphy for Dampa’s epitaph stele (1316) was written by the most famous Chinese artist of his time, Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322), and highlights Dampa’s importance at the Mongol court. It has even been suggested that Zhao Mengfu’s famous painting Red-Robed Monk of the Western Regions (1304) (fig. 6) commemorates him.
Fig. 6.
Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322); Red-Robed Monk of the Western Regions; 1304; ink and colors on paper; 10 1/4 × 20 1/2 in. (26 × 52 cm); Liaoning Museum, Shenyang; public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Several historical sources attest to Dampa’s applications of Mahakala in the service of the Mongolian military machine; in recognition, many temples and images dedicated to Mahakala were built throughout the empire. Numerous Mongol victories were attributed to Dampa’s summoning of Mahakala. For instance, when the Mongol army first marched south, the Chinese petitioned their martial god Zhenwu to save them, but the Chinese god of war fled, leaving a message that he too had to hide from the Great Black God leading the Mongol army. In another battle Mahakala was sighted on the battlefield. Dampa’s Chinese biography concludes, “This is proof of how he aided the state.”
Most famously, in 1275, when Qubilai asked his Imperial Preceptor Pakpa to induce the protector deity Mahakala to intervene against the Southern Song, the Nepalese artist Anige constructed the temple south of Beijing with its statue facing south (that is, facing the Song), and Dampa consecrated it. The Song capital fell soon thereafter. When the captured Chinese emperor and his courtiers were brought north, they were astonished to see the image of Mahakala just as they had seen the deity among the Mongol troops. These accounts of the fall of the Southern Song via the ritual intervention of Mahakala are recorded in both Chinese and Tibetan sources.
The Artist’s Identity
The artist Konchok Kyab is thus far unidentified. It has been variously suggested that the sculptor was a Tibetan trained in Anige’s -inspired workshops at the Yuan court, or that he might have been a Newar, or even Anige himself. This sculpture in fact bears Newar artistic features, while also showing conservative eastern Indian/Pala aspects. However, the horns placed on the garuda bird (Tibetan: khyung) (fig. 7) at the top of the sculpture are a small yet very specific Tibetan cultural reference, which suggests that the sculptor Konchok Kyab was Tibetan.
The kind of hard beige-green stone that composes the sculpture is known to have been used in Burma and eastern India. Of those found in Tibet, most are believed to have originated from these places.Such small stone sculptures often follow a stele, or plaque, format, with an image carved into the front of a slab of stone in deep relief, while the broad back remains flat. These sculptures were often painted, as seen here.
Extant Chinese stone sculptures of this deity reveal an entirely different aesthetic, as evident in one example related to the Yuan state cult of Mahakala and found at Baochengsi (dated 1322) (fig. 8), a sculptural niche in Hangzhou, the cultural heartland of China. This sculpture must have been made by a Chinese artist, for Mahakala resembles a bearded Chinese general.
Fig. 8.
Mahakala niche; Baochengsi, Wu Shan, Hangzhou, China; dated 1322; photograph by Karl Debreczeny
Rethinking Yuan Dynasty Art
The sculpture of Mahakala featured here, and the inscription it bears, embodies the religio-political relationship at the heart of Tibetan involvement at the Mongol court. Two years before its creation, in 1290, Dampa was recorded sculpting images from clay with his own hands, which Chinese sources specifically described as “Indic” (fanxiang). Tibetan sources also refer to Dampa as the principal sculptor directing a group of artists—some sources specify Chinese artists—in creating large-scale images of the same form of Mahakala in 1284. If Dampa was indeed the patron, could this sculpture have been produced by a Tibetan or Newar artist in Beijing in an “Indic” style under his direction? Considering the diversity of cultural traditions brought together by the Mongols, including the prominent role of Tibetans, Newars, and in visual production (for example, Feilaifeng, the White Stupa, and more), this stone image signals a need to further rethink what characterizes Yuan dynasty art.
Footnotes
1
Grupper 1984, 76n19; Charleux 2008, 188.
2
Stoddard 1985a, 281; Sperling 1991, 457n7; van der Kuijp 1995, 287; A. Heller 1999, 87–88; Vitali 2001, 37–38n45; Debreczeny 2015, 132–33.
Wang Yao 1994, 958; Shen Weirong 2004, 204; Debreczeny 2015, 137.
11
Shen Weirong 2004, 204.
12
For instance, the Fozu lidai tongzai; the Protection of the Nation Temple Stele (Huguosi beiming); and the Rgya bod yig tshang. See Franke 1984, 158, 161–62, 175; Sperling 1991; Shen Weirong 2004, 204.
Thanks to Elena Pakhoutova, Gautama V. Vajracharya, Kerry Lucinda Brown, and Ian Alsop for sharing their thoughts on the Newar stylistic qualities of this work.
15
Stoddard 1985a, 278.
16
Other examples are largely made from a softer pyrophyllite, such as one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2015.500.4.23, and one in the Palace Museum, Beijing. See Luo (2009), 138–39, pl. 72.
17
Su 1996b, 368–72; Xiong 2003, 162–68; Debreczeny 2015, 138–40.
Berger, Patricia. 1994. “Preserving the Nation: The Political Use of Tantric Art in China.” In Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism 850–1850, edited by Marsha Weidner, 89–124. Exhibition catalog. Lawrence: Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas.
Charleux, Isabelle. 2008. “From the Yuan to the Qing Dynasty: The Career of a Famous Statue of Mahākāla, Lord of the Cemeteries.” In Han Zang Fojiao Meishu Yanjiu 汉藏佛教美术研究 (A Journal for Studies in Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Art), edited by Xie Jisheng 谢继胜, 83–207. Beijing: Shoudu shifan daxue chubanshe.
Debreczeny, Karl. 2019b. “Faith and Empire: An Overview.” In Faith and Empire: Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism. 19–51. Exhibition catalog. New York: Rubin Museum of Art. https://issuu.com/rmanyc/docs/faith_and_empire.
Different Asian religious traditions posit different types of divine beings. Hindus generally believe in an all-encompassing God-like being, called Brahman. They also believe in a variety of other gods (deva), including Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Early Buddhists denied the existence of a single, all-powerful creator god. Nevertheless, they always recognized a variety of powerful spirits, like gandharvas and nagas. Mahayana Buddhists came to see bodhisattvas as beings of enormous power, and buddhas themselves as cosmic beings with the ability to create entire universes. Buddhist and Bon traditions in Tibet worshiped a variety of other gods (Tib. lha), like the mountain gods, or gods of the land. According to Buddhist tradition, enlightened deities are seen as beyond the cycle of death and rebirth, whereas gods (including Hindu gods) are not.
The Tanguts were an ethnic group in medieval East-Central Asia, who called themselves Minyak and spoke a language distantly related to Tibetan. Between 1038 and 1227 CE the Tanguts ruled a state in what is now the Chinese provinces of Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai. This state took the Chinese dynastic name of Xia, also called Xixia “Western Xia.” The Tangut-Xixia emperors were major patrons of Buddhism, inviting both Chinese and Tibetan monks to teach in the capital, and instituting major Buddhist translation and printing projects in three languages. The Tangut state was destroyed by the armies of Chinggis Khan, leading to their absorption into the Mongol Empire, where many Tanguts served as officials.
The Tibetan script is used to write the Tibetan language, as well as several other smaller Himalayan languages. Based on the Brahmi script used in the Gupta Empire in India, the Tibetan script was developed under the Tibetan Empire in the seventh century and is credited to minister Tonmi Sambhota (b. 619?). Two important forms of the Tibetan script are “Uchen” (Tib. “having a head”), a standard type used in printed texts, and “Umey” (Tib. “headless”), a cursive form sometimes used in manuscripts. There are many other cursive and decorative forms of the script.
Historically, Tibetan Buddhism refers to those Buddhist traditions that use Tibetan as a ritual language. It is practiced in Tibet, Mongolia, Bhutan, Ladakh, and among certain groups in Nepal, China, and Russia and has an international following. Buddhism was introduced to Tibet in two waves, first when rulers of the Tibetan Empire (seventh to ninth centuries CE), embraced the Buddhist faith as their state religion, and during the second diffusion (late tenth through thirteenth centuries), when monks and translators brought in Buddhist culture from India, Nepal, and Central Asia. As a result, the entire Buddhist canon was translated into Tibetan, and monasteries grew to become centers of intellectual, cultural, and political power. From the end of the twelfth century, Tibetans were exporting their own Buddhist traditions abroad. Tibetan Buddhism integrates Mahayana teachings with the esoteric practices of Vajrayana, and includes those developed in Tibet, such as Dzogchen, as well as indigenous Tibetan religious practices focused on local gods. Historically major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism are Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, and Geluk.
In Hinduism, Buddhism, and Bon, some gods and deities are shown with flaming hair, bulging eyes, mouths showing fangs, adorned with garlands of severed heads, and trampling enemies, real or metaphorical. In Tantric Buddhism, such deities are said to be wrathful manifestations of wisdom and method who assume fierce appearance to protect, remove or overcome mental afflictions blocking the path to enlightenment. Others are unenlightened, indigenous gods bound by oath to protect Buddhist traditions. Some female deities, or dakinis, like Vajrayogini, appear as semi-wrathful, in beatific form but bearing small fangs. In the Bon tradition, similarly to Tibetan Buddhism, wrathful deities can be emanations or represent local gods and sprits. In Hindu traditions, gods and goddesses can appear fierce, holding many weapons meant to overcome demons.
The Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) is the branch of the Mongol Empire in Asia. In 1260 when Qubilai Khan declared himself Great Khan, his realm included Mongolian, Chinese, Tangut, and Tibetan regions. In 1271 emperor Qubilai Khan proclaimed the Yuan dynasty on a Chinese model, employing Tibetan and Tangut monks. Tibetan Buddhism played an important role in the state, establishing a political model that would be emulated by later dynasties, including the Chinese Ming and Manchu Qing dynasties. The Mongols were major patrons of Tibetan institutions, and many Mongols converted to Tibetan Buddhism, though their interest declined with the fall of the empire.
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